Respect Authority

In the interest of transparency, I’m going to tell you all something. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering the vast majority of my contributions to Respect Authority are in some way related to, or at the very least allude to, television, but I consider it a potentially damaging confession nonetheless. So here goes: I watch a lot of TV. Like, a lot. Like perhaps 20 different shows at any given point in seasonal programming, to say nothing of stalwart time-passers like Law & Order or Cops.

It’s taken me months, nay, years, to come to grips with what one might call a television addiction, but now that I’ve accepted my habit—in part by pairing it with what some close-minded people might also consider another “addiction” (thank you, delivery herb)—I’m ready to talk about it. Not in the “The first step is admitting you have a problem way;” if it were a problem, God wouldn’t have invented DVR. No, I’m ready to let you all into my world – the world of reality contestants and vegetarian vampires and fat people who just can’t find love. So get ready, because here comes the thunder. That’s right, recaps.

In the interest of preserving some semblance of variety (and dignity) on RA, I have heretofore refrained from sharing my near-nightly analysis of various television programs. After all, this is the stuff of professional reviewers, not hapless bloggers with a sweet-ass bong and lots of free time. But if you haven’t noticed, our creative well hath run dry (hey, everyone goes through droughts, California even has water police) so I’m taking this opportunity to fill my lifelong dream: getting paid to write about TV. Except minus the paid part.

Enjoy. And try not to judge. Read More ›

Is it bad that I just realized lil’ Chicago’s a candidate city for the 2016 Olympics? I’m sorry, but its just that I forget that there’s anything between New York and Los Angeles!

In any event, Chicago’s trying to host the Olympics in 2016 ya’ll and this time America’s actually got a shot. During the 2012 selection process, NYC represented the U.S.’s only realistic chance of winning the Games because it’s the only U.S. city with enough casual anti-American sentiment to be considered “worldly”. But even NYC’s notorious anti-ness couldn’t make up for just how much Europeans hated Bush so they gave it to fucking London… again.

This time, however, people love our president. In fact one of the IOC selectors has a picture of him on her refrigerator (not kidding). Obama, not one to squander an opportunity to capitalize on his fame, is making his interns post videos of him on YouTube talking up Chicago and how awesome it would be to have the Olympics there. That coupled with the shocking fact that almost every single one of his very successful advisers used to work for the Chicago 2016 bid committee bodes well for Chicago’s chances at winning this thing and will ensure endless frustration for Aaron if he doesn’t get out of Chicago before it’s too late.

Just imagine… years of construction so that millions more people can fill every corner of Chicago for two long hot weeks in August.

[Politico]

Humans are largely fickle creatures. For instance, when I go to Taco Bell, I often have a fiercely embattled inner dialogue over whether I should get a chicken quesadilla (I’m pretty sure the critical ingredient here is the nectar of Mount Olympus drizzled all over the fucking thing… well, it’s either that or jizz) with a couple heavenly soft tacos on the side, or just fuck the whole quesadilla idea and eat as many soft tacos as I can before throwing up.

After all, Taco Bell soft tacos are the closest thing we have to mass-produced, processed, and completely inauthentic Mexican candy. And if I’m celebrating Mexico’s prized exports, I don’t think I’d be too fickle in choosing a soft taco over, you know, fucking swine flu. Sounds nice though, it’s just not my thing… you know, dying young.

Today, friends, I’m concerned over the Obama mania that has struck much of the nation, particularly in light of his hundred days of solitude and all that shit. He’s likable… too likable… I almost want him to be my dad. And I think it’s very easy to become swept up in the celebrity of him, his beautiful family garbed in gorgeous designer clothes, and their kind of retarded looking dog, and just how much better in probably every way possible he is than the previous president. Remember, it wouldn’t be all that hard to do better than that, and we need much more than that in these TETs (tough economic times). To say nothing of all the other catastrophes waiting in the wings.

And yes, it was very easy to be critical of Not-My-President Bush, but I think we need to remain critical of our country’s leaders always. We are adrift on some perilous slopes, and we are looking to this new administration to guide us back to base camp 1 — but what if they feed us to Yetis for a whole ton of cash instead? Think about it. Remain vigilant, and all that shit. Not trying to preach, just sharing some food for thought.

Granted, you could do a lot worse, considering the Republicans of late have turned into a frenzied pack of wild, God-fearing dogs. And wild dogs aren’t the cute, kinda dumb kind that hump your leg at a party — no, their feral counterparts are more like mangy wolves, with scary, relentless barks, that will bite at your jugular if you give them the chance. I think I’m still making a Republican party metaphor here but I kind of hit a penny and derailed a bit… I’ve been watching too many nature documentaries lately.

…”Too many” — hah! Can you believe you’re getting this kind of comedy for free, people?

After about a thousand pages and what feels like years of babbling, the apocalypse-averting stimulus-recovery-rescue bailout package has been finally passed and signed. The economy works again! Right? Right?

Um, maybe.

The first point that merits making is that the Republican bitching was kind of intellectually honest — in that the bill wasn’t exactly a stimulus package, nor did it directly address the emergency at hand. They complained that the monies appropriated by the bill are for something called “spending” rather than “stimulating.” Which, according to Republicans, doesn’t equal “job creation.”  

That being said, Republicans haven’t proven themselves capable of crafting sustainable economic policy, so any criticism they offer should be taken with a huge, absolutely inedible grain of salt. However, it still remains to seen whether the Democrats’ bill (with provisions for birth control, education, and energy independence) will fill America with smart, capable and productive citizens who can do something other than manage other people’s money (poorly - I’m looking at you, you fucking bank managers). Read More ›

Check it out, just in time to insert some pork into the new stimulus package!

Damn… that sentence had innuendo up the butt.

Speaking of double meanings, but on a (incrementally) more serious note, that thing looks uncomfortable in more ways than one. Change sure has come into the sex toy indus- oh forget it, fuck me with the rubber manifestation of wordplay’s dick.

Oh yeah, and this post is NSFW… just, you know, by the way.

When street culture inevitably becomes mainstream culture, what will be the new underground scene? Gardening, perhaps. Or more likely, reading. Something really uncool, that’s for sure.

By now everyone has seen Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama poster (pictured right), which he created before Super Tuesday as an independent promotion for the rising presidential hopeful (get it?!?!). Its popularity grew faster than even Obama’s, and soon the poster was everywhere.

From street wear and street culture blogs, where Fairey’s work is more typically featured, to mainstream political blogs, and of course, slathered on random buildings across New York’s East Village, the image was almost as pervasive as the general consensus amongst rational human beings that George W. Bush really needed to go the fuck back to his home on Planet of the Apes and stop ruining ours.

Naturally, Obama’s campaign, in its tide-turning understanding of modern marketing, picked up on the poster’s viral success and contacted Fairey to produce two more posters for official use, this time bearing the slogans “Vote” and “Change.” Fairey’s portrait went on to be used on the cover of TIME Magazine’s 2008 Person of the Year issue, and in fact, Fairey was even included as one of GQ’s people of the year. Lucky fuck. Literally no other time in history would this have been possible; for somebody’s work, that would largely be considered vandalism and a form of graffiti by the scowling majority, to not only be positively recognized but then actually utilized by a fucking presidential campaign… well, change really must have come to America. Read More ›

In a few hours, America will swear in its first real life, jive talking, b-balling, black-Hawaiian president, and sometimes I forget how significant that is (probably because I’m too busy planning my shanty house for the shanty town we’re all moving into). 

Barack Obama’s election means a lot of things to a lot of people, but fundamentally it symbolizes, in no uncertain terms, that anyone in America can grow up to be the President. A huge departure from the sort of recovering alcoholic, coke snorting retard you’d like to have a beer with who stole the election eight years ago.

Unlike Bush, Obama can’t do much worse. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who’s doing better than they were eight years ago. The world is ending environmentally, economically and politically. Holiday Season 2008 was like a menopausal mother who ruined Christmas by going broke over unaffordable makeovers that haven’t really worked.  

Politically, well, omgshoes. It seems the only thing we’ve been spared these last eight years is a huge famine in a part of the world that isn’t always starving (I’m looking at you Africa, get your shit together). In other words, Barack Obama was elected to save the fucking planet.

The least we can do is draw up a tidy list that organizes Obama first term’s various challenges in bullet format:

To Do

• Invent 10 million jobs by organizing the largest governement infusion of capital in history. Make sure that money is spent on sensible infrastructure improvement, viable social programs and not stolen by inept/corrupt local politicians across the 50 states for pork projects. Kill Rod Blagojevich. (New York Times)
• Save an auto industry that thinks it’s a good idea to use millions of bailout dollars on full page ads in the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal thanking America for its “investment” in them. (Gawker)
• Transform America’s energy infrastructure and industry so that we don’t turn our purple mountains and fruitful plains into an oven we stick our fat heads in 50 years from now. Try not to look like Jimmy Carter. (Houston Chronicle)
• Redirect troops from Iraq into Afganistan and establish stability in a state that hasn’t seen law nor order since before my parents graduated grade school. Try not to look like an international pussy. (RealClearPolitics)
• Reestablish reputation worldwide. (Daily Telegraph)
• Hope that asteroids, aliens and hurricanes stay away. (Colbert Nation)
• Run for President again. (NY Post)

For residents of a time period so fraught with uncertainty, so overwhelmed by doubt, our causes for concern so looming and concrete, we sure are pretty unconcerned about it. Relatively, of course.

We live in a strange time. Peril is loitering on our front stoop and we’re all pressed against the floor in the TV room, whispering, “It’s just a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses… stay quiet and hopefully they won’t know we’re here.” Chronically sheltered, our generation has barely acknowledged, and far too late at that, the coalescence of catastrophes bubbling just below the surface. Where are our flappers, our beatniks, our hippies and our punk rockers? Indeed, where have all the countercultures gone?

Our generation’s great youth movement, the ubiquitous hipster, is in fact not a counterculture, but an extreme excess of all that mainstream culture adores. Hipsters embody the hedonism of the late 90s and early 21st century without any of the guilt of having to go to work the next day. In a sense, it seems they have almost given up, accepting the inevitability of Western civilization as we know it coming to an end, and therefore choosing to get as fucked up as possible in the meantime. Why bother rallying around a cause when there is nothing left to save? Read More ›

I know, I know, we’re all sick of election shit by now. At this point, we’re just glad we’re able to stop holding our breath and are enjoying the oxygen in peace, without a constant drone of political media coverage. Nonetheless, I think this bit of trivia is pretty interesting, so drone on we will.

The New York Times has only used 96 point type on their front page four times in the history of its publication.

• MEN LAND ON MOON
• NIXON RESIGNS
• U.S. ATTACKED
• OBAMA

Kind of interesting to think of it as a U.S. history as written by the Times — these are their “most defining” moments in our country’s history. These are their categorically most impacting events. Nixon’s resignation is certainly significant culturally, but no atom bomb headline? That changed the entire world and continues to. And no “Bush Chokes on Pretzel” either? Eh, well, hindsight’s 20/20.

On the other hand, there’s foresight, which might be what’s driving these eBay auctions for the November 5th, 2008 edition of The New York Times so fucking high. 40 bucks for a newspaper 5 days after it originally came out? Wonder what it’ll be worth in a couple decades, and how much that value will vary based on how this presidency goes. Either way, sure is a handsome sunnuvabitch.

This graphic probably doesn’t exactly resonate with people who think humans walked alongside dinosaurs 4,000 years ago, but please, remember to vote, kids. If for no other reason than I don’t feel like being dead in a year. Iran’s largely an arid climate, let’s not make it the next balmy vacationing spot of choice for America’s 18-year-olds. They’re much better off at home turning into future alcoholics at college with all those troublesome intellectual types.